Oral Answers to Questions

Mel Stride Excerpts

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer.

[Sir Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

In response to the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) on borrowing, the right hon. Lady suggested that she was following a strict deficit reduction plan. I think she made reference to a reduction in the deficit of £20 billion year on year—but, of course, it is easy to reduce something if you pump it up recklessly in the first place. Could she tell the House how much more borrowing this Government will undertake across this Parliament compared with the plans that she inherited from the last Government?

[Rachel Reeves]

To start with, let us remember that the plans we inherited from the last Government would have seen fuel duty go up straightaway; the plans that we inherited from the last Government would not have seen £29 billion of investment a year in our NHS; and the plans that we inherited from the last Government would have seen business rates for our high street businesses—our retail, hospitality and leisure businesses—go up straightaway. We did make the decision to change that inheritance because we thought it was the right thing to do, and we still do. The International Monetary Fund confirmed that we have the fastest rate of fiscal consolidation of any country in the G7, and our borrowing as a share of GDP fell to 4.3% in the last financial year and is due to fall in every single year of this Parliament. This is the first time that our deficit has been lower than 5% since 2019.

[Sir Mel Stride]

The right hon. Lady does not seem to know how much additional borrowing this Government are undertaking compared with the plans of the last Government, so I will tell her: it is one quarter of a trillion pounds of additional borrowing across this Parliament. The truth is that this Chancellor is addicted to borrowing, which means, compared with what otherwise would be the case—she said exactly this, in terms, in the answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash—higher borrowing costs, higher inflation, higher interest rates and more sluggish growth, doesn’t it?

[Rachel Reeves]

What the right hon. Gentleman is basically admitting is that he would have gone ahead with the increases in fuel duty and business rates, and that he would take that money out of our national health service. We made those changes on the mandate that we got at the election, and at the same time we are reducing the budget deficit so that, for the first time in six years, it is now below 5% of GDP. As a result, the Bank of England has cut interest rates six times, helping all our constituents with their mortgages. This is very different from the hikes in mortgages that we saw under the previous Tory Government.